Cognitive Behavioural Therapy: Your route out of perfectionism, self-sabotage and other everyday habits

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CHAPTER 1

Understanding CBT for goal Achievement

‘People are not disturbed by events but by the view they hold about them.’ Epictetus, Roman philosopher c. ad 75

This statement is probably the most important principle of Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT): that of emotional responsibility.

This chapter will introduce you to some of the basic ideas and principles of Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT) and how you can use it to help you achieve your goals. I’ll be presenting the following topics:

• Basic principles
• Emotional responsibility
• Change is possible in the here and now
• Truth
• Common sense
• Helpfulness
• Types of thoughts
• Theory made simple

Basic principles

What does Cognitive Behaviour Therapy mean?

Cognitive simply means our ‘thinking processes’: how we think, how we acquire information and knowledge, how we store it in our head, how we evaluate it and how we base some of our decisions on it.

For example, how do you know that you are no good at drawing, singing, or mathematics? What made you form that opinion? Is it because you tried and realized that you couldn’t draw, sing or work out equations? Is it because you received positive or negative feedback from other people? Did you come to your conclusion after one or several attempts? Did you know that you were good at drawing after making just one picture or that you were not good at singing after only one session? Perhaps it was only after repeatedly failing to get ten out of ten in mathematics that you began to believe that you couldn’t do it.

When we make decisions, most of us think about whatever it is, then we think some more, and then again and again. We are thinking to ourselves most of the time. Does this thinking affect our opinion of ourselves and do these opinions affect how we feel? How do these opinions about ourselves influence our success?

Behaviour means our action or reaction to something. It’s the doing bit. Our behaviour can be conscious or unconscious (out of our conscious awareness). In CBT, the word ‘behaviour’ comes from a branch of psychology called ‘behaviourism’, which is concerned with what can be
observed rather than what can be speculated or assumed. It is based on what you have learned and become accustomed to, how this affects your actions and feelings, and how you can unlearn what you have learned in order to change.

Therapy means the treatment for a health problem, after a diagnosis or an assessment has been made. CBT is a form of therapy that examines how our thinking, attitudes, beliefs, opinions and behaviour are formed, how they affect our success, our lives and feelings, and how changing them impacts on our performance. The ideas stem from both ancient and modern thinking in philosophy, science, psychology, common sense and humanity. In this book I will show you how using CBT can help you set yourself up for success and overcome those beliefs and habits that sabotage your life. I am going to ask you to be open-minded and to consider whether changing your thinking, attitudes and beliefs about yourself and your abilities will affect your performance and your life.

Emotional responsibility

‘People are not disturbed by events but by the view they hold about them.’

This principle is at the heart of nearly all emotional and behavioural change. It can be challenging because you may believe that it’s what has happened to you that ‘makes’ you feel how you feel and do what you do.

Questioning this will show you that what you believe stops you from empowering yourself to move forward with your life. It will help you pursue your desired goals despite the obstacles and setbacks you may encounter in the process.

Is it true that events, situations or people make us feel what we feel?

First, let’s look at the popular notion that your feelings are caused by events, situations or other people.

Think of a past event that caused you to respond with a certain emotion and associated actions. The only way you can change your feelings now is to wish that this event had not happened.

If someone else ‘made’ you feel and act in a certain manner, then the only way you can change your feelings now is to get that person from the past to change their feelings and take back whatever they did or said. And if that person is now dead, how can this be done?

Believing that the past, or a particular situation or person, causes feelings today, means that no one would ever be able to move forward or to change. We would all be totally stuck without any possibility or hope of ever altering anything. We would be slaves to the things that had happened to us or the people we had been involved with.

Can you imagine what it would be like if everyone felt hurt every time they experienced a rejection of some sort?

Rejection = Hurt
10 people rejected = 10 people feeling hurt
100 people rejected = 100 people feeling hurt
1000 people rejected = 1000 people feeling hurt

As an example, when you experience rejection you might feel hurt. If you believe that your feelings are caused by others, you may also believe that rejection only causes pain. This means that if you feel rejected no other feeling apart from hurt can be experienced. But don’t some of us feel anger, sadness, depression, relief or happiness? If rejection only causes hurt then every person who has been rejected (that’s probably all of us) would still be feeling hurt.

In fact, different people feel different emotions when they experience rejection:

Some people feel hurt
Some people feel angry
Some people feel depressed
Some people couldn’t care less

Why do different people feel different things and what causes their feelings?

Is it true that events or people make us do what we do?

Let’s think about what we do and assume that situations or people make us behave as we do.

A colleague criticizes you = You start avoiding them

If it is true that a colleague’s criticism ‘made’ you avoid them, this means that every criticism made by your colleague would have the same effect on everyone. It means that avoidance is the only possibility whenever your colleague criticizes you, or anyone else for that matter.

A colleague criticizes 10 people = 10 people avoid them
A colleague criticizes 100 people = 100 people avoid them
A colleague criticizes 1000 people = 1000 people avoid them

Does this make sense?

The problem is that people say, ‘he made me do it’ or ‘she made me lose my temper’. It is as if they have absolutely no control over how they feel or how they behave. Once again, if we do not have a part to play in how we feel and behave then we would be completely stuck, unable to move forward, learn or do anything useful. Is this what you see happening to everyone around you?

So what causes your feelings and reactions? Most of the time the simple answer is that you do. You cause your feelings and reactions by the way you think, the attitudes you’ve formed, the habits you no longer question and the beliefs you hold.

This is the principle of Emotional Responsibility: You are largely responsible for the way you feel and act.

The principle of emotional responsibility can be difficult to accept, particularly if you are going through a difficult time or have experienced trauma or personal tragedy. It’s natural to feel angry, sad, depressed or hurt in response to accidents, illness and other challenges in life, but you can change your reactions after the initial feelings have passed.

Different people feel and experience contrasting emotions even when they go through the same tragedy. We all react differently to the same situation or event, or to what other people do or say. It is not the situation but your response that causes your emotions.

The thought manifests as the word;
The word manifests as the deed;
The deed develops into habit;
And habit hardens into character;
So watch the thought and its ways with care. (Buddha)

The way you think about something affects how you feel and how you behave. Here is an example:

• If you think that your partner’s late arrival for dinner proves that you are not lovable then you might feel hurt and sulk.
• If you think that your partner was nasty and selfish because they arrived late for dinner then you might feel angry and shout.
• If you think that your partner’s late arrival for dinner is no big deal then you can feel calm about it and ask what happened.

This shows that it is not the situation or what happens to us that causes our feelings and behaviour. It is the way we think about the situation. The way we think about something can then influence how we behave.

Change is possible in the here and now

The principle of emotional responsibility is not only true but also enormously empowering. It clearly shows us that we can change how we feel and act, if we want to. It shows that change is possible in the here and now. It shows that we can free ourselves from negative and unhelpful thinking patterns and behaviour. It shows that we are not slaves to the past, even if the things that happened were very bad.